The Language of Food

August 14, 2010 5:42 PM

The Language of Food is a blog with only four entries, but each one is an excellent, well-researched essay on, yes, food and language: ketchup, entrée, dessert, and ceviche. The author, Dan Jurafsky, teaches a parallel course at Stanford, the syllabus for which you can peruse here. via (mefi's own) honestengine.blogspot.com
posted by Rumple (10 comments total)

Hi folks. My name is Dalton, PhD 2009 in Ketchup from Stanford, and I will be your waiter tonight.
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 6:13 PM on August 14, 2010

I really enjoyed this. It's a pity that the blogger hasn't written new entries for a long time.
posted by Bwithh at 6:53 PM on August 14, 2010

the seemingly authoritative and convincing article on ceviche completely ignores the south pacific. polynesians and melanesians have been cooking fish in lime juice for centuries.
posted by kitchenrat at 6:59 PM on August 14, 2010

Polyglot Vegetarian has a number of other essays on various foods and ingredients, often quite far-ranging.
posted by Nomyte at 7:09 PM on August 14, 2010

*cough*

What a pity there are only four awesome posts. More please!
posted by cali at 9:04 PM on August 14, 2010

SWEET! TIME TO MONETIZE!

Actually, yeah, totally got that from Cali.

Great blog.
posted by klangklangston at 9:06 PM on August 14, 2010

Weird coincidence, I never saw cali's comment or that other ketchup post at all, but came to it from the other direction -- I'd never even seen klang's highly monetizable blog before either.

But yeah, it's a shame there are only four, I'd read forty of 'em...
posted by Rumple at 9:47 PM on August 14, 2010

Great links, thank you. I especially enjoyed the ceviche/fish-and-chips and ketchup ones.
posted by vorfeed at 10:24 PM on August 14, 2010

The syllabus is the real gem here. There are a lot of interesting-looking papers to go through in there. The first reading, on the language of menus, is pretty entertaining.
posted by painquale at 12:15 AM on August 15, 2010 [3 favorites]

One Peppercorn is another excellent blog devoted to food and language. Sample entries: Bisaro, Butnege, Jostaberry, Liederkranz, Odorra pod, Stewed tea. (One of the above is not a real food; can you guess which?)
posted by verstegan at 5:43 AM on August 15, 2010 [1 favorite]